


torpor

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>psychomotor retardation:</em> a generalized slowing of physical and emotional reaction, such as that seen in major depression and in catatonic schizophrenia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	torpor

it's not like you're in love, or anything special.  
  
it is only that he is convenient and kind.  
  
you stay because he continues to be convenient, and because there is nowhere else for you to go.  
  
sometimes when you are restless you organize his piles of battered, spine-cracked books.  hard science, pulp fiction.  he leaves them in heaps by the king size mattress that you bought to avoid each other while you sleep.  some nights it is not large enough to keep your elbows from bumping.  sometimes it is vast, and the loneliness slips between your ribs like a knife.  
  
no bedframe.  
  
from time to time you ask him if he wants to get a boxspring, but he only shrugs.  
  
the one-room apartment is always too damp; the paint bubbles and comes off the walls in flakes.  he replaced the steam valve on the radiator after rust-colored water began spraying out of it in screaming tea-kettle jets. the plumbing in this building is a century old, needs to be ripped out and replaced. it won't be.  
  
the window looks out on a brick wall.  sometimes light comes in.  sometimes it's dark.  you finally put up the venetian blinds that you ordered with his laptop, after the package sat on your side of the floor for two weeks.  the blinds make it easier for you to stare at the ceiling and not move.  cut the light into simple patterns.  
  
there are stretches of time - days, weeks - where you lie on the musty sheet under the synthetic microfiber blanket, resting your skull on an irritatingly limp pillow, and you find you cannot sit up at all.  you can only make yourself get up to stumble to the bathroom after you've intended to for at least an hour, and it takes another hour for you to walk the seven feet back.  
  
you lie on your back and stare at the ceiling like your eyes could burn holes through it.  during these long stretches of torpor he will occasionally put a cigarette between your lips, and light it for you, and laugh in a tired, sad way when you don't flinch.  once the ash starts to fall on your face, you usually reach up and hold it properly.  sometimes you let it burn down to the filter.  
  
there is a routine.  sollux wakes up, showers, shaves, eats a bowl of ramen, and settles down to code for nine hours on his laptop. he chain smokes, and gets through about two beers every day, building a small mountain of empty cans.  once the pile is vast enough, he takes the cans to the recycling center in a plastic trash bag, and comes back with more beer.  
  
he has a skull-shaped ashtray, and he cracks the window open at the top, to let the smoke out, but it cures the walls anyway. if he's out of cigarettes, he crosses the street to get two packs from the twenty-four-hour store.  
  
once a week he rolls the cracks out of his neck and shrugs his shoulders and says he's going to go get food.  
  
"you should come," he says.  
  
you never do.  it'd be easier for him to carry it back, if you took the train with him, but you tell him, "save the train fare," and he never argues. the simple idea of getting out of bed exhausts you.  
  
every week is more or less the same. sollux purchases bulk ramen, a carton of eggs, two store-brand bags of frozen mixed vegetables, and two cases of shitty beer.  
  
sometimes if he's buzzed and he's staying up late he'll play music while he works, humming along brokenly.  he asked you if he should get headphones, if the noise bothered you.  you continued to watch the bars of sunlight move over the floor, and did not answer.  
  
his off-key humming makes it a little easier for you to sit up.  it's like a movement you can absorb and experience by proxy, it chips away at your overwhelming inertia.  you make your own ramen.  you stumble into the shower and scour off the grime and sweat, and you fumble with the razor until your face is mostly smooth, leaving a mess in the sink.    
  
sollux curses, but he cleans up after you.  
  
you didn't realize, before, how kind sollux was.  
  
"we should change the sheets," you say every couple of weeks, after thinking it for at least five days, and he agrees, like he was waiting for you to suggest it. waiting for your permission to disturb things.  you sit below the window, on the floor, in pajamas you have been wearing for a week, and you watch him shove the bedding and your clothes into a laundry bag.  
  
"i'll be back in a few hours," he tells you as he leaves.  you don't say a word.  it is very quiet, with him gone.  the inertia swallows you up again like water closing over your head.  
  
you've never been to the laundromat he goes to, and you've never been to the super-cheap grocery store he tells you he "discovered", and you have no idea how long it's been since you left this apartment.  
  
sometimes you wonder what would happen if he got hit by a taxi on his way back.  
  
you think you might just lie very, very still, and shut your eyes, and wait to stop breathing.  
  
sometimes he's got a day or two between projects, and he gets drunk.  
  
plastered, he presses beer-tasting kisses to your stale mouth.  he strokes your limp hair, makes an effort to slide his tongue between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, works your stiff jaw open. his eyes are bleary and he says things like "are you okay?"  
  
"she's still dead," you tell him, "so no."    
  
he laughs in a way that a broken man might laugh at a funeral, and sometimes he wants to punch your face in, but he leaves you alone.    
  
you don't feel anything at all.  
  
and you don't feel happy, and you can't remember what feeling happy involved, but you aren't unhappy either.    
  
you are driftwood.  you are dissolving.    
  
from time to time you wake up, through a thick mental fog, with an erection.  this occurs less and less frequently over time. you're too apathetic to jerk off.  
  
if sollux notices, sometimes he'll do it for you.  you guess that's considerate of him. if he's crossing a boundary, if he's blurring lines, if this is pity or contempt, you don't know.  you shut caring out.  it's not your body, this useless collection of limbs and brackish saltwater.  it's a prison, and you are waiting to leave.  
  
he kisses your forehead and says, "i'm going to go get groceries.  you should come."  
  
you figure he keeps you around because he needs something to feel better than, and you assume he smokes so much because he no longer cares whether you both get cancer, and you are certain he drinks so heavily because he is determined to die first.  you remember how she looked in the morgue, and wonder if you're there yet - ashen and cold and absent.  
  
"save the train fare," you say.  
  
and then he is gone, and the apartment is silent.


End file.
